Last April, Edmonton hosted the largest EDM festival ever held in Western Canada. About 16,000 ravers showed up to the two day Elements Festival. Hell, even the mayor made an appearance. Now, those aren’t huge numbers compared to the 300,000 attendees at the Electric Daisy Carnival, but then again Canada is relatively new to the large scale rave festival.
More than twenty fans ended up being hospitalized for overdosing on drugs. This has lead to the city council releasing 11 “recommendations” for future events. And while they claim “it is not the intent of this report to speak specifically about the Elements Music Festival (EMF),” they are clearly focusing on EDM events. After all, it’s hard to believe that Edmonton hasn’t hosted any large scale events up to this point.
The good news is that raves haven’t been banned from Edmonton. Still, one has to wonder if the Elements promoter will simply skip the city the next time around. After all they paid the police department an astounding sum of $148,228 to handle a two day event. Can’t imagine that they wouldn’t try to find an alternative. Why do you think Bonnaroo is held on a farm in the middle of nowhere rather than downtown New York City?